Tag: Google Voice

Today, the HTC G2 has been finally been announced by T-Mobile. The G2 will be the first phone from T-Mobile to feature HSPA+, which is more commonly known as 4G. The T-Mobile G2 will sport a 3.7-inch screen with a resolution of 800×400 along with a slide-out four row QWERTY keyboard. The slide-out QWERTY keyboard will also have shortcut keys for quick access to various Google services. The phone packs in 512MB of RAM along with 4GB of internal memory. An 8GB microSD card will also be present in the retail box of the device.

The phone also sports a 5MP camera with LED flash and auto-focus. The handset will be powered by a Snapdragon processor from Qualcomm running at 800 MHz. Early benchmarks indicate that the G2 is no slow-couch and offers graphical performance similar to the Motorola Droid X/Droid 2. The G2 will also be running on stock Android 2.2-YES!-Stock Android 2.2. No operator customizations, no HTC Sense on top of the Android UI nothing!

The G2 will also be the first phone to feature a handy Google Voice widget which we saw earlier. Existing T-Mobile customers will get the opportunity to pre-order the device first. The device will be up for pre-order sometime later this month. Sadly, T-Mobile did not mention anything about the pricing of the device.

The volume of calls was tweeted through the official @google account on Twitter. The volume of calls though surprising might have been because Google is allowing free phone calls to US and Canada for US users, with users from other countries also being able to call US for free.

There is no indication by Google as to how many phone calls were paid, however, it would be interesting to know those numbers as it would show whether users are only using this service because it is free or whether they are actually using it to call other countries too.

Nevertheless, 1 million phone calls in 24 hours definitely looks like a success for Google and it would be interesting to see how much of a market share they can capture from other players like Skype. One thing is definite, once Google has this service integrated for mobile phones through Google Voice the volume of calls will be much larger.

Calling rates to several countries are pretty low, for example calling India using Gmail would cost you 6 cents per minute to both landlines and mobile phones, calling to UK is about 2cents. This is on par or a bit higher than several calling cards available in the United States. You will find all the calling rates at this page.

Google will use your Google Voice account number as the outbound caller ID. You can also receive calls made to your Google Voice number within Gmail after following these instructions. You will need to install a voice and video plugin for your browser, which can be downloaded from http://gmail.com/call.

The new calling button is integrated into Google Chat, and users can click on "Call phone" at the top of the chat list and dial a number or enter a contact’s name from your Google contacts. This feature will be rolled out to US based Gmail users in the next few days.

Update: I got to try this feature out in my account and it worked pretty well. I tried calling my own number and several others and the voice quality was excellent.

Gmail is no doubt one of the best email service available online, and Google has been adding several features which are not only useful but have also changed the way people have been using online email.

In the past Gmail has added an ability to send SMS messages to users in chat or Google Talk, and now according to reports from Cnet News, Google is preparing to add the ability to call people using Google Talk.

The new feature will make use of VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) similar to what Skype does to allow users to call other users in US and Canada for free and charge for international calls. According to the information available it would be much lower than the charges you pay to your phone carrier and might even be lower than Skype.

The new feature could be an integration of Gizmo into Google Talk, which Google had purchased in November 2009. It would be interesting to see whether Google integrates this service with Google Voice and allows users to create a number that users could call in and answer the calls using Google Chat.

Skype which is the leader in VoIP calls offers similar service, however, the voice and video quality of Skype is much better than Gmail. Nevertheless, it might not take Google much time to build a solution which rivals Skype or is even better than them.

Earlier last month, a Google Voice Desktop application had leaked which gave users the ability to users to make and receive calls from their desktop. I would definitely want to see this integrated with Google Voice, which would mean that I could use Google Voice on my Android phone and then use it as a primary way to make or receive calls without having to pay exorbitant charges to my carrier. However, that dream could be a long shot, since there is so much at stake. What do you think?

Looks like Google Voice might be trying to take over Skype on the desktop in the future. In a video that aired on TechCrunch today, Mike Arrington got hold of the Google Voice Desktop application using which he could make and receive calls.

The calls were of pretty high quality and did were made using the inbuilt speaker and microphone on the computer. The Google Voice Desktop app has a definitive edge over the Skype application because it is attached to your actual phone number. If this app is released it will make it really easy for users to make phone calls from their desktop just like Skype and will definitely make Google Voice one of the best innovations ever.

As it has been with most Google products, after immense testing (read teasing) the general public with an awesome service, Google has finally opened up Google Voice for everyone without having to wait for an invite.

Yes, the Google Voice wait is finally over. You can go ahead and sign up for a new account right away at https://www.google.com/voice/ and you will instantly get a Google Voice number. However, this will only work for US users right now.

Before you start out with Google Voice, you have to understand that it is not really straightforward to understand and use the service, so you might want to head over to the features page to get an understanding of how the service works and what you can do with it.

For a quicker overview, check out the video below which tries to explain in simple terms what Google Voice is all about.

Google Voice is a really awesome service, which provides you with an alternative number which you can use to manage your physical phones, and also setup rules and filtering so that you are not disturbed with unwanted calls or messages. Unfortunately, Google voice is only available for US citizens and that too with an invitation.

The good news is that Google is giving away free Google Voice invites to U.S students. To request a free invite, all you need is a .edu email address – this is to ensure that you are a student.

To request a free invite, head over to this page and fill a simple application form as shown below:

Google Voice is currently only available by invite, a lot of students are still listening to voicemail and sending text messages the old-fashioned way. As a recent college graduate, I can’t think of anything more painful! So starting today, we’ll be giving priority Google Voice invites to students.

If you are a U.S Student and do not have a Google Voice invitation yet, this is the right moment to request a free invite.

Google Voice is a really awesome service, which provides you with an alternative number which you can use to manage your physical phones, and also setup rules and filtering so that you are not disturbed with unwanted calls or messages.

However, Google Voice goes much beyond this explanation and cannot be simplified it mere words. So what is the next best thing to get a hang of Google Voice? A video of course that takes your through the workings of Google Voice and explains to you what exactly it is.

So if you have been wondering what Google Voice is, watch the video below to clear your doubts. You can also head over to the Google Voice about page to learn more about it.

There have been speculations on whether Google would be launching its own branded phone and by that we do not mean Android OS built in to Samsung, HTC or other branded phones, but a device/hardware manufactured by Google. Rumors do come true, or at least in the case of anything involving Goolge. A Google branded phone was spotted in wild.

Gizmodo, has reported that they received this information from some trusted source. According to the source, the device does not run on the Chrome OS. Moreover, they call the OS a full version of Android’, which has got us quite confused. Besides that we are sure that this device would make good use of Google Voice to its core. We are quite certain that over the next few weeks, there would be an abundant supply to information over the web; or at least rumors.

Gizmo 5 (Gizmo Project, SIPphone) has become yet another one of those independent IM and VoIP communications networks that has been acquired by Google Voice to expand on its work. Though there were several offshoots of this project such as mobile Gizmo5 (as you can see from this cached copy of their old website ), most of these might be replaced by Google’s apps in due time.

Existing users can still access Gizmo5 services and products, but new user signup has been blocked for now. There is still no word on the new features. An integration with Google Talk is highly anticipated!

From the blogpost:-

While we don’t have any specific features to announce right now, Gizmo5’s engineers will be joining the Google Voice team to continue improving the Google Voice and Gizmo5 experience